The film Snowpiercer (2013) attracts me a lot. After the tutorial I watched it and thus I have a better understanding of “movable city”. The train and the Engine play an important role in it. Because of the ecological disaster, a tiny remnant of humans have found shelter on a train endlessly circling the globe. On the train everything is just like the original world, only shown in a more cruel way. Inequality is amplified, killing is justified, even revolt events are designed, just for the “balance” of the train. This running train is just like a small-scale world.
This film also reminds me of another film I have watched before, The Wandering Earth (流浪地球, 2019). Similar with Snowpiercer, this film is also about the future human destiny. In the year 2061, out raging Su is about to turn into a red giant threatening to engulf the Earth’s orbit. The United Earth Government thus initiate a priority project to migrate the Earth out of our Solar System into Alpha Centauri system for further human civilisation. Different from Snowpiercer, the film is intended to show the collaboration of people in this “movable world” and tends to find the humanity in this serious situation. It shows that, in this wandering Earth, we are a community of shared future for mankind.
Song Yang, 3035772781
I appreciate that you raised another example of your own as comparison for Snowpiercer. The apocalyptic situations you described have always given me the impression that Noah’s Ark is perhaps one of the earliest migratory cities. In the case of Wandering Earth, what is the vessel for migration? It would be great if you can further compare the “order”, or in your words “balance”, are achieved as well as the daily operations or control over mass in both movies.